Tímarit Þjóðræknisfélags Íslendinga - 01.01.1967, Page 59

the poetry of egill skalla-grimsson
41
the pole repeating this whole for-
rnula.” (Hollander).
Though the saga does not say so
h is not unlikely that what Egill
^ctually cut on the spite-pole were
the stanzas listed as 27 and 28 in
his saga. The brilliant scholar
Magnus Olsen has shown that, if
'WTitten' in runic orthography, each
half of these verses contains ex-
actly 24 syllables and 72 runes. But
the number of the runic alphabet
(fuþark) was magic: it was 24 and
^2 is 3 times 24. Any multiple of
the fuþark would have magic prop-
erty. I shall quote stanza 28 in Hol-
lander’s translation:
May the powers repay the
prince and drive him from his
realm, for wrouth are at the
robber all gods and Odin:
put to flight the oppressor
of people, Freyr and Niorð, the
foe of free men, who defiled
the holy thing-meet.
This was the second time Egill
fesorted to the use of runes against
^unnhildr, and this indeed con-
stituted the climax in his fight
against her and King Eiríkr. He
r e P o r t s the incidents of this
episode in stanzas 28-31 in the saga,
^hile stanza 32 describes his steady
t>oat on the rough seas homeward
bound.
Egill ever had any misgivings
ab°ut his magic powers, he must
bave been convinced of their exist-
ehce when he heard of the effect of
his curse on King Eiríkr and Queen
^unnhildr. They had to flee from
Norway and go to Northumbria
Where Eiríkr managed to eke out
an existence as a King in York.
is tempting to assume that
aier on when Egill began to feel
restless at his home in Iceland he
may have suspected that Queen
Gunnhildr’s magic was responsible
for his feeling of uneasiness. Ac-
cording to Egils saga this uneasi-
ness brought on by magic motivated
his journey to England, where he
wrecked his ship at the mouth of
the Humber and decided to take
the bull by the horns by going
to York to visit his trusted friend
Arinbjörn who was King Eiríkr’s
equally trusted retainer. Arinbjörn
decided that there was nothing
Egill could do other than give him-
self up to King Eiríkr and then
compose a poem of praise about the
King. This poem could then become
a veritable head-ransom, Höfuð-
lausn in the same way as another
poem by Arinbjörn’s illustrious
ancestor the poet Bragi the Old had
done on a previous o c c a s i o n .
Egill agreed to his friend’s sug-
gestion and composed a poem in
one night. This poem was a drápa
of twenty stanzas. While Egill was
composing, his friend Arinbjörn sat
up and protected him against the
magic sendings of Gunnhildr.
Of all Egill’s poems Höfuðlausn
is the most splendid in form. It is
a drápa of 20 stanzas divided by two
refrains into a beginning (1-5), first
middle part (7-8), second middle
part (10-11), third middle part (13-14)
and an end (16-20). The meter is
runhenl, the running rime meter,
probably the first genuine instance
of that meter. One stanza by Egill’s
father composed in the same meter
is of questionable authenticity. Very
likely Egill learned this meter in
England either from church hymns